Once upon a time there were two mice. Despite their size, they imagined a world where they could do whatever they wished – where all other forces submitted to their designs. They had this dream quite frequently – essentially, every night.
Featuring metronome and saxophone quartet – baritone, alto, tenor, and soprano.
Cat cohabitators know – with great cuteness, comes great expectations. Routines are established, and deviations are not tolerated. Habits are enforced by meow and claw, as once an order of events is set into motion, it must be brought to fruition.
Featuring concert and world percussion, including taiko, vibraslap, cuica, cow bell, triangle, udu, talking drum, timpani, snare, xylophone, marimba, fish bell chimes, and lion’s roar.
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
So it goes.
So *something* goes. For now – until it becomes something else. Yet, still – the same.
Featuring bass clarinet, and breathing.
released February 1, 2026
A. Stefan Christoff – Demand the Impossible
01. A sky entrance
02. Arc
03. Turning in the Bosphorus
04. Demand the Impossible
An album recorded in Sofia, Bulgaria one late evening in October 2023
Recorded and mixed by Yoncho Pavlov at AD 57, Sofia, Bulgaria
All piano compositions are original improvisations by Stefan Christoff
B. Open to the Sea – The Sofia Intuition
1. Please stop loving me
2. I will not wake you up
3. I recognise you
4. Bodies in contact
Reworks of Stefan Christoff’s original piano recordings with:
Saverio Rosi – OP-1 with wind instruments, double bass, synths
Matteo Uggeri – laptop, samples, random drumming
Enrico Coniglio – guitars
Mastered by Ryan Morey
Original artwork by Catalina Villegas-Burgos
Layout by Angel Draganov
Síntesis boreal
Esta pieza surgió como una experimentación con la idea de los triángulos, sus búsquedas de balance y de síntesis. Me sentía atraída por la energía del sol y los eventos cósmicos como eclipses y auroras boreales, así que los puse a danzar y a atravesarse. Cuando escuché el álbum de Stefan ‘’Demand the Impossible’’ sentí que mi experimentación le venía perfectamente por el juego de voces entre el bajo y las notas un poco más agudas e insistentes de esta obra. De algún modo, veía también los triángulos en su música y los tonos ‘boreales’ sobre fondo oscuro. En ambas obras: la musical y la visual, percibo desplazamientos y formas que se cruzan. Cuando ambos triángulos se encuentran, ¿es el sol un testigo de aquel eclipse o es acaso una fuerza oculta?
– Catalina Villegas-Burgos. (album artwork artist)
///
It felt unlikely that this recording session would actually happen in Sofia, Bulgaria, but I am really happy that it did and I can share this moment in time. I had played a concert in Sofia that same evening hosted by Tsvetan Tsvetanov of the experimental Bulgarian National Radio program Alarma Punk Jazz. After the show finished I rushed over to the basement studio, AD 57, just before midnight. Sound engineer Yoncho Pavlov generously agreed to record this session super late and we recorded until just before 2 am in the morning. After the session I ran back to the apartment where I was staying with Canadian activist scholar Ezra Winton, packed my bags and rushed to the airport for a flight to Berlin that was set to depart at around 6am.
Despite all the rushing around this recording, the mood and feeling of the sound reminds me of the stars. In certain parts of Sofia there aren’t a lot of street lights and the sky feels close to touch. The mountains that shape the Bulgarian landscape also hold a presence and vibe in the capital city. While playing piano I was thinking of the sky above, the stars and the lands around Sofia and the Balkan region. This project is important to me because of my Bulgarian roots, my father is Macedonian Bulgarian. It was a long road from growing up in Canada to finally making it back to Bulgaria and to finding a path to work on this recording and music in Sofia. I hope that you can feel the emotional resonance in the piano tones.
Another layer to this recording is the fact that recording took place in the context of the Israeli state’s military attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza. The recording took place in November and the horrifying news coming out of Gaza spanked an intense need to take action around the world. In the week before this recording I had been with friends at protests and events to mobilize for Palestine in Montréal, Amsterdam and London. I was often thinking about Palestine during this recording session and the critical importance of sustaining an involvement and finding ways to support Palestine throughout my lifetime. Walking with and supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and against colonialism is one of the essential progressive causes of our time, we must never be silent and always find ways to stand up when Palestine is in the headlines and critically when it is not. I certainly was thinking of my Palestinian friends and comrades around the world who have played such an important role in my life over the last decades throughout this recording, that is the honest truth. I hope that you can hear the sense of commitment and urgency around supporting Palestine that I have carried and acted upon my entire adult life.
Thank you for listening to this solo piano recording from Sofia, it means a lot to me, sending love from Montreal.
– Stefan Christoff.
[mhrk478]
Periodically, things happen. The specifics depend upon whom they are happening to. Regardless, it can be understood as the union of two sets – that which is expected, and that which is not.
The expected is best met with preparation – practice makes perfect, when a thing can be practiced.
The unexpected requires something else – it asks of us a certain height. To achieve what we can, and to go beyond it, even – especially – imperfectly.
Featuring clarinet.
A baffle makes all the difference. If baffled, consider – shifted. Though much remains similar, a new perspective offers altered wavelengths.
Featuring overdubbed tenor saxophone.
Things – even great things – are imperfect. But, when considered in context, and in space, they can still be appreciated. Reflections on surfaces, delayed over time, give rise to a variety of perceptions. By seeing the signal in the noise generated by the signal, we acknowledge the signal for both what it is and what it can be.
Featuring flute and effects.
Hung – over.
…
Perchance, to dream,
with visions of a better.
A better?
Sometimes, stopping is
good –
a suspension of maladaptive behavior.
Sometimes, stopping is.
Featuring clarinet.
Some songs on Another Crying Game began to take shape at the very start of the iT project, but as short fragments they did not find their form or place on the first album. After a long period of oscillation between emergence, forgetting, gestation and rewriting, and alongside later songs, at least some have now found their place and form.
Some songs were originally created for specific dance-theatre performances and were later given new lyrics and additional melodies. For instance, The Night of the Soul emerged in 2007 during a creative process at the Grotowski Institute’s Atelier programme in Poland. The simple melody of Vsemu kar je blizu (a short poem by Hafiz) was composed for the performance Rodeo by Maja Delak and Mauricio Ferlin in 2007, while the melody and part of the lyrics for Just the Way It Is were developed during the process and as part of the performance Out of Discord with Joséphine Evrard in 2010. The first audio fragments and drafts of Happiness were written around 2006, as were the drafts for the song Počasi. The rest appeared sporadically, in pieces and fragments, over the following years. Song Realnost iluzij, is based on Anja Novak’s poem of the same name and is part of her interdisciplinary poetry collection Rane rane (Wounds Wounds).
Another Crying Game is an echo of the the first iT album, Crying Games, released in 2011 by rx:tx, Projekt Atol.
A physical device, with keys pushing hammers via levers, was utilized. The relative position and velocity of the hammers was measured via optical sensors, digitally recorded, and wirelessly transmitted. These numerical records were reconstituted via software and samples of previously recorded audio – more numbers.
You are most likely hearing the result after it has been stored and transmitted several more times, and used to trigger very particular vibrations of air molecules via whatever digital audio hardware you have available. Finally, your ear receives those vibrations and converts it back into electrical signals, which are interpreted by your brain in a process that is still largely inscrutable.
You imagine the experience as acoustic, an organic occurrence of natural sound. But the organic experience only happened once, and we are left with this artifact – a very particular arrangement of bytes.
Featuring improvised piano, mediated via many bytes.
Another debut in the label’s catalog. Ryohei Kurihara releases his two-track mini EP titled “Afterimage of Words, a Place Beyond Return”, bringing us his ambient drone, echoing traces of his previous works.
The record sounds like sonic shadows that linger in memory, guiding us toward a territory where return is impossible—only slow, radiant contemplation in gentle waves of sound.
It offers nearly 20 minutes of layered sonorities that reveal an emotional space where silence breathes between grainy textures. Kurihara shapes frequencies with meditative precision, allowing each drone to unfold like a blurred memory.
The result is a sensorial crossing that deepens the meaning of the title, where words disappear but sensations remain to this day.
Know your audience, know yourself. Introspect, or obsess – a strange loop come unfurled. A journey, a place, a time to face. Now gnawingly, no notes know – yet.
Featuring improvised clarinet.
Ten years ago – another time. Simpler? Not really. Earlier, and with different players playing a different game. A new player at the time – Jazzaria – now marking its first decennial. May it see decades to come.
Featuring improvised clarinet.
Necessary. Inevitable. Unavoidable. Imminent. Impending. Foreseen and pre-ordained. Inescapable. Irresistible. Undeniable. Unceasing. Meant to be.
Featuring improvised piano.
There’s something strange – and clearly, not good. Life, stifled. Free expression, caged.
The next chapter is unwritten. Consider picking up a pen.
Featuring clarinet.
released October 16, 2025
Luboš Fidler – classical guitar, bass guitar, field recording, mix & remix
Matěj Fidler – handpan
guests:
Zdeněk Konopásek – drums and cymbals, trumpet
Štěpán Pečírka – voice
Jan Štolba – sax
music:
Luboš Fidler, Matěj Fidler
played and recorded 2022 – 2024 at Studio Albern, Albeř (cz)
sax recorded at Dvacítka, Prague (cz), díky Jano
trumpet and drums recorded by Zdeněk in Zadní Třebaň (cz)
1, 2. 1 te 2 te. 1-ti-te-ta 2-ti-te-ta. 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta 2-ta-la-ta-li-ta. Hamburger.
Featuring a Wittner wooden metronome and clarinet.
Distimed, not displaced – dancing along through technical grace. Wet reeds vibrate all the same, and fingers play a similar game. Sound that matters, sound it out – music will allay your doubts.
Featuring bassoon and clarinet.
Composed during the night air raids. Andy would simply send his loved one off to sleep after the air raid sirens stopped, then go to his studio to record yet another not-so-jolly lullaby.
This album is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity. It captures the complex emotions and experiences of those living through war, and how they find solace and beauty in the midst of chaos. The kalimba, with its gentle, soothing tones, serves as a beacon of hope and comfort in these dark times.
credits
released September 22, 2024
